Winter Gardens
by PixieGirl17
Summary: When Saki suffers from a miscarriage she tries to find a way to deal with her grief and the coming birth of Tohru's child...


**Disclaimer: **I do not own Fruits Basket

**Winter Gardens**

For **Lovemeg101**

Saki stared out the window with a lifeless expression on her face. It had been a long time but she still felt empty inside. She was told that this was the 'appropriate' response to what she had been through. When her therapist told her this her only response was that it seemed to be the one thing rape victims and women in her experience seemed to have in common. The next day she was reassigned to someone else. Although to be honest she hoped that she would go through this process enough times for them to stop sending her to therapy altogether. She just wanted to be with Kazuma and with the rest of the family if she had to be with anyone. Though to be honest she hoped that people would forget that this happened altogether and she would just be able to move on and pretend that this never happened. However every single time she tried to assert this she always received a pitiful, sad look from the person she was talking to making her regret her tough love attitude. She wished that there could be some way for her to be able to deal with what she was feeling at the time. Or at least a way for her to not encourage people to think that she needed more help than she actually needed. She just hoped that eventually it would become a thing of the past. However because it happened only a few months ago she would have to inevitably put up with this for a few more months and then maybe it would become a thing of the past.

She had been told that there were millions of other women who had been able to move on from what she had experienced but at the time it seemed pretty hard to believe. No one ever really moved on from loosing a child. The problem was that it seemed pretty ludicrous for her to feel like she lost a child considering that she never gave birth to it. That was another thing, she never even referred to it by a specific gender, not even by a name she and Kazuma had cooked up between them. There was none of that but still she had these horribly overwhelming feelings of loss for something which she technically never had. She didn't even recall feeling any energy waves from her unborn child. When Arisa's twins were an inch away from death she thought that was bad, when you actually went through that yourself it was more than just being able to understand what that person had been through it was like it was being through in your face and you were being forced to take it whether you liked it or not. She couldn't help but feel like Arisa should take the role of being the empathiser rather than the other way round. She knew the world could be a morbid and rather pessimistic place at times but ever since she met Tohru everything seemed to be getting better. Now she felt like she had been dragged back to square one.

"Saki?"

She blinked and looked across the room to see Kazuma carrying a tray and smiled. She was usually the one doing such work around her but the doctors had ordered her to do nothing which would put her through too much stress or hard work so she wasn't allowed to do anything until further notice. She found it funny because he looked so uneasy within this role as the nurse but she knew that he had problems with looking after her. In fact he was more than happy to because he probably saw it as his fault for this happening in the first place. He carefully carried the tray across the room and placed it on her lap.

"How are you?"

She shifted in her seat with an uncomfortable expression on her face. She looked away so that he wouldn't see the expression on her face since she knew it would hurt him more if he thought that his inquiring after her health annoyed her in any way. She only felt like this because she hated that question. She had been asked that question one too many times in the past few months and she thought that it was getting a little old for it to be the opening line to a conversation with her. Something about the weather would even be a nice change.

"I'm fine."

She was still looking out the window when she said this to him since she knew that if he saw her face he would know that she was lying because she looked sad when she said this. She was being just as bad by lying to him since she was going along with the whole charade that everything was eventually going to be okay. It was but pretending that she believe that now was just as bad as never believing in that at all. It was almost like she was playing along with the charade but she knew it was easier than being honest.

"Tohru and Arisa said that they might come and see you tomorrow."

She pressed her lips together. "That should be nice...I haven't seen them in a while..."

Kazuma glanced up at her with a doubtful look on his face. "Are you sure?"

She turned back to him with a blank expression in her eyes. "Why wouldn't I be?"

Kazuma looked away for a moment and sighed. He knew why this would be a problem but he didn't want to stir up an argument between them. He had never seen Saki angry but he had seen her upset. On that horrible night when they were in the hospital after her accident there was a look on her face which suggested that she was about to cry but he never saw a single tear roll down her cheek once.

He shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know...I just thought you might be tired or..."

She smiled maybe a little too scornfully. "You think I would be too tired to see or speak to my closest friends?"

Kazuma tilted his head and brushed his fingers through her hair. "You know I didn't mean it in that way."

She sighed. "Yes I know."

Kazuma shook his head and sat a little closer to her. "No you don't. What I meant was...Well Tohru has a child with another on the way and Arisa...Arisa nearly lost her twins but they are still here. That is the only reason why it concerns me that they would wish to visit. I think it would be too much for you."

She closed her eyes and tried to block out all those horrible, hateful thoughts which she could feel beginning to close in. She didn't want to push Kazuma away, not now. Now would be the worst moment to try and fight him since she knew that if she pushed him away even just a little bit there would be an even smaller chance of getting him back again. It was hard enough that they had been able to maintain their relationship for this long considering their age difference.

"I don't want people to think that I am weak." She replied.

He touched her hand and leaned closer. "We know that. Everyone knows that you've been...dealing with this in your own way. But it also means you don't have to be a martyr. You don't have to deal with this alone and it certainly doesn't mean that you have to face things which you're not ready to face."

"And you think I can't face being with my friends? They're the people I need to be with the most Kazuma. Whenever they've been there...It's the only thing which reassures me that everything will be alright."

Kazuma left things at that and left her alone in that cold room. Time seemed to pass rather smoothly from that one moment to the next day when she heard the doorbell ring and there they were standing at her doorstep. She was determined to greet them herself knowing that Tohru would get all panicky and help her back to the living room or wherever she could find for her to sit down and rest. Arisa would chide her for worrying Tohru and probably would demand to know how she was doing and she would then continue on to interrogating her so that she would be reassured that Saki was telling the truth. The strange thing was that she didn't mind when she was getting all of this from Tohru and Arisa. It was just when everyone else did this. She knew she was more or less and honorary Sohma as much as Tohru and Arisa was (even though Saki was the only one out of the three who wasn't married) but she still felt a little bit like an outsider for this very fact. She felt at home with them but she couldn't help but feel like there was a gap between her and everyone else in that family. When that confrontation rolled about she was right about the way that they responded when they found her answering the door rather than Kazuma or anyone else who could have been there.

Arisa blinked. "What are you doing up?"

"I'm perfectly fine, Ar-"

"OH MY GOODESS WE NEED TO GET YOU TO LIE DOWN!" Tohru practically screamed.

Arisa sighed and took Saki and Tohru by the shoulders and directed them down the corridor and into the living room. She pressed down on their shoulders to get them to knee down at the table after she had done so herself. After she was done she looked pretty exhausted by that simple manoeuvre then again she had two children at home and taking care of Tohru could sometimes take enough energy out of you without having a couple of children in order to do that.

"Now how are you? How have you been?" Arisa demanded.

Saki shrugged her shoulders. "I'm fine. I've been coping as much as one can be capable of being able to cope."

Arisa narrowed her eyes at her. "Alright."

Tohru leaned forward towards Saki steadying herself on the table. "Hana if there's anything you need you just let us know okay?"

Hana nodded and glanced down at the slight bump Tohru had her hand placed over. Everything in the room, Tohru and Arisa, seemed to blur out of focus and Hana and the little child growing inside Tohru's stomach seemed to be the only beings there. Everything seemed so quiet she swore she had been able to hear the child's heartbeat.

"Saki are you okay?"

Saki glanced up at Arisa. "I'm fine. Tohru, when's the baby due again?"

Tohru blinked at her and for a moment she must have wondered why she was asking this and then glanced down at her stomach. A startled look flashed across Tohru's face as she just remembered that she was pregnant for a moment and turned back to Saki with a panicked expression on her face.

"Oh my goodness I completely-"

Arisa groaned. "Tohru stop apologising for being pregnant." She turned back to Saki sharply. "You're okay, right?"

Hana shook her head. "Like I said I'm fine."

"Yeah...You seem to be saying that a lot lately..."

"So Tohru, when is it the baby's due?"

Tohru seemed to have calmed down a little. "In the winter."

"Ah so you have a winter child this time round. Little Kazuma was born in the summer as I recall."

Tohru smiled at the memory and nodded. "Yes."

Saki tilted her head and remained quiet for the rest of their visit. Thankfully the conversation veered in the direction of Tohru's pregnancy since they must have gotten the message that seemed fine with that since she was one who initiated it in the first place. For a moment she felt like everything had gone back to normal although deep down she was pretty sure that that feeling wasn't going to last very long.

~ (***) ~

She decided to take the advice of everyone she was coming across merely because it was theonly way she was going to get through this period. She was going to take 'an active part in her grief'. Whatever the hell that meant. To her, it meant that she had to show that she was continuing on with her life. That she was actually facing life rather than trying to avoid it. So she decided to grow some flowers for when Tohru's child was born. She couldn't think of anything better than flowers in the winter. When she told Kazuma this she could see that he was somewhere between relieved and worried. He was probably worried that she was doing something which might cause her a little bit of stress but also relieved that she was actually doing something. She sought advise from people on what would be the best thing to grow and decided on pansies, hibiscus and (most surprisingly) roses. She was surprised if anything that she could actually grow those in the winter, and that she of all people and those of all flowers were going to be collaborating with one another. She sought to look after these flowers as if they were her own children and as the weeks and then months passed on she was beginning to feel the interior of herself beginning to heal. Before she felt like there was some open wound but then now that there was something flourishing from all this reminded her that for every death there was a chance for the opposite to occur. It was all about the balance.

As time passed by the flowers bloomed and then Tohru's child was born. She remembered she was out in the garden when the news arrived. When she heard the news over the phone or more Kazuma did and replayed it back to her she felt like all the air had been sucked out of her lungs. There was still dirt on her hands from tending to the flowers which were now just about ready for people to see. She had become so engrossed with this little project of hers that she completely forgot the reason as to why she was actually doing this in the first place. She smiled and asked whether it was a boy or a girl. _Girl. _What did they call her. _They named her after Tohru's mother. _Is the child alright. _She's healthy and happy. _When were they going to come round. _Soon or maybe we could go visit them. _All these questions zipped between them quick enough for it to be over before it becoming too much for Hana. She smiled and pretended to be happy and then returned to her flowers for long enough for her allowed to be left alone. She continued to do this and even when Kazuma told her that he was going to visit them at the hospital to gave some excuse. It wasn't the hospital it was just the fact of being around something which she could have had but had been deprived of. She couldn't stand the idea of being around it so she stayed as far away from it as possible.

Weeks went by and eventually she thought she had gotten away with it until she walked in one morning and saw a little child on the floor of her flower house. Her first instinct was to panic since someone had either broken into the house and left a child there or someone completely innocently entered the house with Kazuma's permission and left their child here. She turned around and was about to call out to Kazuma that there was a baby in the flower house but then she took another glance at the child and saw her bright red hair knowing then it was unmistakable as to whose child it was. She took a few tentative steps forward and held out her hands to pick her up. She withdrew them quickly when she was just inches away for her and turned away. She was treating her almost like the child had some disease or something. She didn't know what it was but she just couldn't bare to pick it up. She closed her eyes and tried to breathe deeply but then every time she did she heard the child whimpering and eventually she got so annoyed that she bent down and swung her up into her arms. She sighed and bounced her up and down hoping that this might stop her from crying even more than she could imagine. The whimpering stopped and turned to the child who was staring at her curiously.

Something hit Saki in that moment she couldn't quite explain the emotion. There was something which she thought that wasn't anywhere maternal instincts or love but it was more with that same feeling which was gradually taking over her when she was beginning to care for the flowers. Something which was completely unexpected but then again that was the beauty of life in general wasn't it, regardless as to whether you had good or bad things happen to you. She felt like she was healing a little more. Only this time she realised how much she actually needed it. She thought all of this was enough but now she realised how much more she needed. Little Kyoko was the little band-aid that she needed. The flowers were like the foundations of which she was going to build on her new life which she was going to set out on and now Kyoko was the icing on top of the cake. Or maybe she was the one to point her in the right direction of where to take this new life of hers. She took in a deep breath, filled with more relief than she thought she would have experienced when she was to first meet Kyoko. She glanced at the flowers and saw a little pansy peeping out at her and walked towards it with Kyoko on her hip and reached out for it plucking it out of the ground and tucking it behind her ear. As she twirled a lock of hair around the stem she smiled thinking how strange it was that death led her to finding something new and unexpected.


End file.
